Lianna Patch
Lianna Patch is a conversion copywriter and comedian. Her work has been featured by Copy Hackers, HubSpot, Conversio, Autopilot, BigCommerce, ConversionXL, and she’s written copy for Freshbooks, Manly Bands, GhostBed, and The Contract Shop (among many others.) She regularly speaks at conferences and events around the world, too.
Tell us about why you decided to pursue writing. I saw you were an English major in college--did you always know you wanted to write professionally?
My dad would say yes! I would say no. The TL;DR is that I planned to be a comic book artist foreeeeeever. But then I got to college and discovered Lo, I Was Not As Talented As I Thought! and would either have to work extremely hard (ew) to keep up with the real gifted folks, or find something else to do.
I chose Option B after a short conversation with my dad, who reminded me that I used to rip off Hans Christian Anderson stories in a marble notebook and said "I always thought you'd be a writer."
Tell us about what your business is like today and how it's different from when you started.
I'm in year 10! I am lax about calculating these things, but p. sure I started freelancing in 2009 as a college sophomore. When I started out, I had ZERO clue of what I was doing, or what I actually liked to do. I knew I was a good editor, though, and a ton of my business for the first 7 years or so ended up being publications editing.
I also briefly took a job after realizing "Wow, I really hate this," about most of my freelance work, I gave up freelancing to go back to the 9-5 world at a startup agency. Turns out I hate working for someone else even more! I left after a few months, rebranded my biz from The English Maven (hurk) to Punchline Conversion Copywriting, and here we are three-ish years later!
How did humor writing become part of your business? And what percentage of the work you do today is humor-focused?
So, right around the time I burned out on editing work and went to work at an agency, I was lucky enough to join Joanna Wiebe's first iteration of The Copywriter Mastermind. I was also doing improv and standup comedy and basically needed permission to mash together what I loved (funny stuff) with what I was doing and learning more about (conversion copy).
So that's how my comedy-based copywriting biz was born! Today, about 75% of my work at Punchline specifically focuses on using funny copy to grow relationships and sales. I do take on the occasional non-humor project, but that's getting rarer.
You've done a lot of public speaking in the past few years. What was the thinking behind building your personal brand as a speaker--and is it something you enjoy/would recommend to others?
WELL. I'm pretty good at entertaining people on stage. It feels good. It's fun! And TBH... it's partly laziness! It feels easier for me to get clients through speaking than outreach. I don't send cold emails, and I think I run like... $12/mo of ads purely for the fun of it.
Chances are, if you think you'd enjoy speaking, you're already doing it in some way or another. If you feel like you have something important to teach but you're too afraid/don't want to get on stage, you just gotta decide whether or not you want to get around that to deliver your important wisdom! (My talks are less "wisdom" and more "cat GIFs, butt jokes, and common sense.")
It's been pretty incredible to be able to travel all over the world to share something that — entirely un-ironically for once — I'm super passionate about: how humor can help us all just squeeze a little more juice out of the giant grapefruit of life.
What one piece of advice would you give yourself if you were starting your writing career over tomorrow?
Understand that everyone's just doing their best, yourself included.
